June 06, 2017

The Blue Zones Solution & Ikarian Stew

I am super excited about The Blue Zones Solution. This book was featured on the Today Show when Maria Shriver travelled the world with author Dan Buettner meeting people who are living to 100 and beyond...and living well! How could I ignore the tips and recipes the research has discovered contribute to a long and healthy life? I printed off the free recipes from the Today Show website and got started with my first live-to-100 dish.

Ikarian Stew is a hearty, minestrone-type stew that is absolutely delicious. It contains several ingredients from the top Super Blue Foods list: beans, greens, and olive oil, plus tomatoes, herbs, more veggies, and garlic. This makes it a one-stop shopping dish to help incorporate these healthy foods into one's life. It makes a large pot so I ate it for lunch a couple of times and froze the remainder. I'm sure I will be making this over and over. You can find the recipe from the Today Show HERE.

I haven't finished reading the book yet but can't wait to really study it. There are so many recipes I want to try (I have made the minestrone soup and it is incredible!) and I'm interested in following the other guidelines for living (i.e. food choices and lifestyle modifications for easy good health). The book is in paperback and not expensive. While it has 77 recipes it is not a glossy, colourful cookbook. In fact, there are no photos of the dishes but the information within is very exciting and powerful to me. I am urging my family to adopt some of the practices, have bought a copy for my daughter, and just picked up a new bicycle helmet so I can add bike riding to my day.

One last note is the this is the ideal way to eat when you own an InstantPot! Making all the bean recipes a daily staple is so much easier using a pressure cooker. Of course, canned beans work too but since I'll be preparing beans more often, it is definitely cheaper to cook the dried variety instead.